In the course of this investigation,I reviewed thousands of pages of regulatory documents obtained under freedom of information and found unpublished data pointing to unwanted proliferative or inflammatory pancreatic effects. The invesitgation also found that, despite published reports that indicated safety concerns, companies have not done critical safety studies; nor have regulators requested them. And access to raw data that would have helped resolve doubts about the safety of these drugs has been denied. On their own, the individual pieces of unpublished evidence may seem inconclusive — increases in size and abnormal changes in animal pancreases, raised pancreatic enzyme concentrations in humans, reports of thyroid neoplasms, and pancreatitis in early clinical trials. But when considered alongside other emerging and long standing evidence—such as concerns about the effect of GLP-1agonists on a cells first published in 1999; the presence of the GLP-1 receptor on cells other than the target pancreatic cell; and increasing signals from regulatory databases—a more coherent and worrying picture emerges, posing serious questions about the safety of this class of drug.
